August 17

An added bonus to this feeding thing is that I have to sit upright someplace for 45 minutes and then I'm supposed to stay sitting up for a half hour afterwards. Perfect blogging time!

So the next time I start feeling bad about medical people or regretting moving from Dr. C to Dr. M, I need to call and make an appointment to see Dr. M. He's the bomb! My pre-surgery meeting with him yesterday afternoon was the total opposite of depressing. Which is good because I'm getting antsy with surgery being less than a week away and my most favorite person in the world is leaving for Myrtle Beach with his daughter as I type this. I had expected this weekend to mentally suck but Dr. M gave me such a boost that I just may sail through this weekend, no problem.

I went over the same questions with him that I did with Dr. V just to verify that I had my info straight. I also had some additional questions saved up, plus Dr. M added his own stuff. So here's what I heard yesterday:

He's going to try not to remove a tooth but he says that the saw they use sometimes will not fit between a patient's teeth and he feels it's better to ruin one tooth instead of accidentally ruining two teeth trying to get the saw in. He said if he does have to remove one, it will be a bottom tooth off to the side, not directly in front. He said he doesn't want me to look like a hockey player. :-)

He agreed that 6 weeks might seem like a long time between PET scan and surgery but he's confident that the cancer did not spread in this amount of time. I told him about Dr. C's assessment of it being a slow burn instead of a brush fire and he totally agreed.

I told him that Dr. V thinks the left side of my neck may need to be re-opened in order to find viable veins to hook the 'flap' to. Dr. M disagreed. He thinks there will be plenty of veins still usable on the right hand side.

He agreed that 'flap' health is the biggest milestone for getting me out of the hospital. He said if a flap is going to fail, it normally does it within the first 48 hours. It doesn't usually wait for 7 days then suddenly fail. He said that I probably had wires sticking out of my neck after my last surgery that they kept hooking up to a pulse monitoring machine. I said yes. He said he doesn't like that. I won't have any wires sticking out of me, they will simply press a tool against my neck to monitor pulse and temperature to verify it's still alive.

He stressed the fact that he's going to work very hard to not take my voicebox. He said that Dr. V is of the school of thought where as soon as you remove half the tongue base, he takes the voicebox. Dr. M says that he himself won't even consider it until at least two thirds of the tongue base need to be removed and even then, he might not do it. He said that I'm young enough that I can probably handle aspirating a small amount and if it ends up becoming a problem, he can always go back in and yank the voicebox. He would just really rather keep it intact. He also said that based on the MRI and scans, he really doesn't think there will be a need to remove it anyway. He said that he's only ever been surprised twice when opening up a patient and had to affect more functionality than he thought.

This is why I like talking to the guy. He's so damn optimistic! And he backs it up with little factoids like the two times he was surprised. He even told babydoll and I what those two time were. Granted, he might be full of shit, but I'm already prepared for the worst so it's nice to have someone be so upbeat about the whole thing.

He briefly explained that I won't be put in the ICU but I'll be put in what they call a step down bed. This is the thing that Nurse Jo Ann was talking about before. I guess it's a bed that's on a floor rather than in the ICU but where I'll get the extra attention I need for a day or two before being moved to a regular room. He said that Highland hospital doesn't have the nursing staff to support this kind of setup but Strong does.

I asked him how soon after surgery does the radiation and chemo start and are they simultaneous or one after another. He said he would start those treatments within 1-2 months after surgery and they would occur at the same time. I think he said that chemo would be once a week for 3-4 weeks and radiation would be the same as last time, 5 days a week for 5-6 weeks.

He talked about how the margin that was taken on my tumor last time probably missed one measly, little cancer cell which then decided to burrow down further into my tongue and hibernated for a while and the radiation somehow totally missed it. He said it could have even been slowly growing while I was getting radiation done but because it's growth was so slow, radiation wouldn't have targeted it because radiation is meant for faster growing cells. Or something to that effect. I'll have to ask baby doll if that's what he heard too.

Meanwhile, I was Googling a few minutes ago to see if I could find the word for the piece of equipment they use to make sure the flap is still alive and I stumbled across a support site where a 24 year old girl was asking for advice in regards to how self conscious she feels about her speech after her glossectomy. Everyone that replied had a little history blurb about their cancer and let me tell you, of the ~15 people that replied to her, every single one of them had their tongue cancer come back at least twice, if not three times!! This is why I do not Google about what is going on with me. I'm sure I can probably find some good info out there but along with the good info, I'm going to get info that isn't going to do me a lick of good. I started this post in good spirits because of Dr. M and his kick ass attitude and I am now feeling really down because it would seem that even after the holy hell I get put through next week, the chances of me having to go through it again are sounding pretty high. What a bunch of crap.

<sigh> I truly hate Google sometimes.

Anyway, even though I am now deflated, I still have more Dr. M stuff so let me get on with it.

Baby doll and I are still booked for the cruise on October 5th. I asked Dr. M what the chances were that we would be able to make that cruise. He said that everything would have to go absolutely perfectly in order for me to be traveling abroad that soon after surgery. He said if we can push it out, that would be best. We also need to keep in mind the radiation/chemo thing too. If I start that 4 weeks after the surgery, I could be done with it by the end of October so a November cruise might be possible. Not sure what kind of shape I'll be in though. Plus, baby doll has some strict limits on when he can take time off once the holiday season is upon us. Guess we'll have to put some thought into it.

I teased Dr. M a little, asking him how he was feeling and telling him I didn't want him out drinking next Wednesday night and that he'd better get plenty of sleep. He said he has tickets to see Kenny Chesney and that he's the designated driver so it should be okay. ;-)

He talked about how he was going to have the big trach in me the first few days but he would then swap it out for a smaller trach so that I could talk and how he would have me up and walking just a couple days after surgery. This led to me verifying when I would be able to go back to work. He's sticking with his 6 month timeline. He said it might be conservative but that's the expectation he wants to set.

I told him how I didn't need pain meds after the last surgery which seemed weird. He said that he also has found that patients with head and neck surgeries often feel less pain which he thinks is crazy. He said if it was him in my shoes he's be crying like a baby, begging for pain meds. Ha! He said the lack of pain might also be due to the fact that they cut through a ton of nerves when they operate in those areas so there are no receptors left to feel any pain. That made sense to me since my entire neck is still numb from the last surgery.

I told him that I had given Jo Ann the number of the person to call when I get out of surgery. He asked if I could give it directly to him as well, so I did. JT should be fully briefed as soon as everything is done.

I asked him if my paralyzed vocal chord will ever start working again (Thanks Kunkel, great question!) and he said probably not. I told him that Dr. V had said something about moving it over. He said that that's a simple in-house procedure that we can easily do after the surgery is done and we see where things stand.

He once again reassured me that the scar from splitting my lip would hardly be noticeable. He also said that I should not be able to see the metal plate they use to reattach my jaw under my skin although he seemed a little concerned about that based on how skinny I am. He also mentioned that one difference I might see this time that I didn't see last time is that I'm going to wake up with some major chipmunk cheeks. He said the swelling will go down after a few days but he wanted to warn me since that probably didn't happen last time.

In the end I told him that he was my all time favorite doctor to talk to. He's just always so up about everything. He said that what I was going through was hard enough and the least he can do is be half glass full guy for me. I'm going to bake him cookies and take them to surgery with me. I have no idea if they'll actually get to him but I'm going to make the attempt anyway.

Baby doll said one of the things he liked the most about Dr. M is that whenever I started talking, Dr. M would immediately stop talking, make eye contact and give me his full attention, and answer whatever question I had very clearly. Nurse Jo Ann was right. He IS an excellent communicator.

So, that about wraps up my appointment yesterday. Other sundry stuff that's been happening.....

I heard back from the corporate guy. My life insurance is not portable should I lose my job at QED.

I called Hartford over a week ago to open my short term disability claim. Their system was down but I spent 45 minutes on the phone giving them info so they could start a 'paper' claim. I was told it would be entered back in the system within 3-4 days. I called back twice to check and it still wasn't in the system yesterday so I had to sit on the phone and go through all of the information all over again. What a HUGE PITA!

Boss guy totally thinks I should go for it as far as bringing my iPad to the hospital. He said that Strong hospital is known around the world as a class A facility and he said if for some reason it DOES get stolen, he'll get me a new one and figure out how to expense it to the company. ;-) Boss guy rocks!

I wore my adorable pink booties in the hospital on Wednesday night that baby doll had bought for me at Barnes and Noble. I had almost changed my mind about letting him buy them for me because they were so ridiculously priced but I truly love them. As I was shuffling down the hall on one of my many trips to the bathroom (damn saline drip!) one of the male hospital workers commented on how cool my slippers were. :-)

Two nights ago Scott was swapping around our cars so that he could park his Corvette in my garage and leave my Honda in the driveway. As he was getting out of the Honda, some guy who was looking at the house that's for sale across the street called over to him and asked how much he paid for his Honda and started talking about what a kick ass car they are. Scott politely told him that he didn't know because it was his girlfriend's car but the word bubble above his head was saying "Dude! Seriously? Did you not just see the sweet ass Corvette that I pulled into the garage?! You're asking me about the HONDA?!?". LMAO!

And on that note, I'm going to go take some pain meds and have me a mid-morning nap. <3